Guy Bilyeu, the new executive director of the Humane Society, said the euthanasia rate there has been cut sharply.
He said the 52 percent rate in September may be the lowest in the state.
Mr. Bilyeu said, "There aren’t any shortcuts on the road to animal homelessness — an unfortunate reality that even Richard Avanzino considers in his discussion of potential solutions.
"Though he sits at the helm of Maddie’s Fund, an organization that aims to create a “no kill nation” through large grants to local coalitions, Avanzino says, “There is no panacea. ‘No kill’ is not the magic answer.”
"And instead of trying to create “mini-San Franciscos” across the country, Maddie’s Fund would rather support programs that weave “safety nets of care” for all cats and dogs by addressing regional needs, he says."
Mr. Bilyeu also said that in the last fiscal year (7/1/03-6/30/03) the euthanasia rate totaled 74%.
Listed below are the totals for the past two months.
August: Total euthanasia rate for August was 66%. 40% came from necessary choices due to space limitations. In September those totals were 53.6% and 13% respectively.
He said the reasons for the reduction in euthanasia include "aggressive adoption programs; a revamped foster program; increased activity in our off-site adoption program; and a sense of urgency among staff members to find proper homes for animals in our care. Another important factor is the proper disposition of animals and only performing euthanasia when absolutely necessary."
According to euthanasia rates posted in a newspaper article, the Humane Educational Society currently has the lowest euthanasia rate in the state.
Aug-03 Percentage Sep-03 Percentage
Total Animals Received 1198 Total Animals Received 1194
Total Animals Adopted 283 23.62% Total Animals Adopted 258 21.61%
Total Animals Reclaimed 82 6.84% Total Animals Reclaimed 49 4.10%
Reason for Euthanasia Reason for Euthanasia Percentage
Space 487 40.65% Space 156 13.07%
Feral 6 0.50% Behavior 7 2.71%
Medical 72 6.01% Feral 24 2.01%
Medical/Contagious 15 1.25% Kennel Stressed/Depressed 3 1.16%
Medical Treatable 1 0.08% Medical 46 3.85%
Medical /Untreatable 6 0.50% Medical/Contagious 66 5.53%
Owner Request 30 2.50% Medical /Untreatable 82 6.87%
Physical Condition 31 2.59% Owner Request 69 5.78%
Policy Decision 12 1.00% Physical Condition 10 0.84%
Temperament 35 2.92% Policy Decision 23 1.01%
Temperament/Aggressive 14 1.17% Temperament 53 4.44%
Temperament/Dangerous 3 0.25% Temperament/Aggressive 14 1.17%
Unweaned 81 6.76% Temperament/Dangerous 2 0.17%
Total Animals Euthanized 793 66.19% Temperament/Timid 7 2.71%
Unweaned 79 6.62%
Total Animals Euthanized 641 53.69%
New or Improved Programs
Low-cost Spay/neuter Program: In July the Humane Educational Society created two new programs to address the problem of animal overpopulation in our community. Both programs are collaborations between HES and the local veterinary community. The first program provides low-cost certificates for low-income individuals and the elderly. The second program provides a reduced adoption rate for animals adopted from our facility. A total of $100,000.00 was dedicated to fund each of these programs. Additionally every animal adopted from HES is now altered prior to adoption.
Animal Behavior Training Program: An animal behavioralist is coming to shelter to provide two training sessions. In the first session the behavioralist will work with 8 staff members and 8 dogs that they choose. The session will last for 6 weeks and in that time each animal will receive a “Golden Leash Award” and will be adopted after the completion of the program. The second session, volunteers will go through the same process. The goal of the program is to have staff and volunteers trained to work with shelter animals and make them more adoptable for the public. This program utilizes positive training techniques.
Off-site adoption program: During the week we send cats an average of 7 to PetsMart to be adopted by the PetsMart staff. Twice a month we bring dogs to PetsMart for adoption. In the near future we will have a staff person on-site at PetsMart during the week to adopt both dogs and cats.
Humane Education: In January we will launch our new Humane Education program for local school children. This program will target children in grades K-12 and talk about proper care of animals, pet overpopulation and why animals need to be altered.
Staff Training: We have several programs that have been created to provide proper training for staff members. Two veterinarians from our Board of Directors have offered to work with kennel staff disease prevention and proper protocol for treatment of various illnesses in a shelter setting. Kennel staff has been trained in proper cleaning techniques and have been given policies and procedures for cleaning, proper use of disinfectants and aging and sexing of dogs and cats.
Volunteer Program: In the past two months we have added 41 volunteers that regularly donate their time to help our shelter animals. This program is continuing to be developed with the creation of our new volunteer handbook, job descriptions and policies and procedures. Volunteers perform a variety of tasks that help shelter animals including adoptions both on and off-site, animal socialization, and cleaning. As listed above they will soon be taught animal behavior and positive training techniques.
Programs for the Elderly: Every week staff members take animals to senior centers. This program is extremely therapeutic for residents. Similar programs nationwide have proven to be beneficial to the health of residents.
Petfinder & Website: Shelter animals available for adoption are currently loaded on Petfinder. Staff members and volunteers take pictures of animals in the shelter. Pictures and animal descriptions are loaded onto the Petfinder website. Currently we are receiving between 4-5,000 views of animals in our shelter by potential adopters. We are in the process of creating a new website that will also have pictures of animals available for adoption and information about our programs, services and links to other organizations that help animals.
Shelter Facts
The animal problem in the Southeast is worse than any place in the country.
Only 5.5% of animals entering shelters in Tennessee are reclaimed. The national average is 16%.
The average euthanasia rate of shelters in Tennessee is 67%.
In a homogeneous country, every community could apply the same cookie-cutter formula to its homeless animal problem and chart the kind of progress that’s been made in communities where animals have finally gained status as sentient beings who are part of the family. But animal shelters are far from immune to the economic and cultural divides that plague U.S. society.
In 2000 Town Lake Animal Center in Austin, Texas (24,000 animals annually) contracted with a mobile spay unit to go into low-income areas to spay/neuter animals for free. In two years over 3,000 animals were altered. Unfortunately it had little to no impact on the amount of animals received at the shelter.
Organizations that take in 10,000-14,000 animals annually have annual budgets ranging from $2,000,000.00 to $12,000,000.00. Currently the San Francisco SPCA operates on a budget of 12 million annually while they take in 8,600 animals.
A typical budget for a similar sized organization is 2-3 million annually. This does not include capital improvements.
The new shelter in Knoxville will house 400 animals and has an annual budget of $2.5 Million.
Last year the Atlanta Humane Society had an annual budget of $5.5 Million. They cared for 14,000 animals.
Communities that have lower euthanasia rates have achieved that goal through collaborations and cooperation between animal care and control agencies, private and public shelters, rescue groups, and the veterinary community. Programs essential to this success include spay/neuter programs, Humane Education, aggressive adoption programs, community outreach programs and innovative volunteer programs.
San Francisco’s widely reported successes have brought the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC the sincerest form of flattery: imitation from others who want to achieve the same results. Citizens and government leaders often read about the “San Francisco story” and assume that the methods used there will work in their own communities—and practically overnight. But the San Francisco SPCA, a 134-year-old organization with more than 1,000 volunteers and a $12 million budget, didn’t spring out of the earth fully formed. It owes much of its success to years of sterilization and outreach efforts, a progressive community that is receptive to social change, and a strong partnership with a well-funded animal care and control agency.
Most people think that San Francisco as a whole no longer euthanizes animals—when, in fact, a quarter of the cats and dogs entering the shelter system are euthanized.
The S.T.O.P. program in New Hampshire was created after 30 years of efforts to reduce animal overpopulation. Those efforts animal legislation, low-cost spay/neuter clinics, Humane Education in schools and collaborative efforts between animal organizations and local and state government. Through these efforts and community support New Hampshire has the lowest euthanasia rate in the country.
The following is a quote from Peter Marsh (the creator of the S.T.O.P program). “It's been said that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. We've learned from a century of work that no single group can end the killing of homeless animals by itself. It takes a village. That's because prevention is the key to ending companion animal homelessness and preventive programs have to be deeply rooted in the community to succeed. Broad coalitions like No More Homeless Pets in Utah allow advocates to develop proactive programs in their own hometowns, where the battle to end the killing is won or lost.”
Funding for low-cost spay/neuter programs is easier to obtain with cooperation between all entities that serve animals. For instance, applying for a Maddie’s grant is a rigorous process. It’s designed to be, because Maddie’s Fund wants to attract only those organizations that have already assessed the needs in their communities and established formalized coalitions to address those needs. Currently Maddie’s fund has a purse of over $240,000,000.00, which is expected to grow to over 1 Billion by the end of the decade.
Maddie’s Fund emphasis on spay/neuter and adoptions as the means to reduce euthanasia rates is considered simplistic by some in the field who see the picture as more complex. National studies and local anecdotal evidence point to the effectiveness of education and intervention programs such as pet-behavior counseling and pet-friendly rental housing initiatives; in areas that are taking in more adolescent and adult animals than babies, the solution to animal homelessness lies in an array of services designed to help pet owners overcome the issues that often lead to homelessness in the first place.
Ed Sayers (Director of the SF/SPCA) stated the following: “The process to get there (ending animal overpopulation), unfortunately, requires collaboration and meetings and shared goals. It’s not magic.”
Animal Shelter Costs
A state of the art animal shelter has just been completed in Escondido, California.
This shelter has been chosen for comparison purposes because it takes in between 10,000 and 13,000 animals per year, which approximates the number served by the HES in Chattanooga.
Project Size: 15,000 square feet of space for offices, animal intake, housing, and surgery.
Costs were $4,000,000.00, including $1,000,000.00 for a roadway leading to the shelter and costs of bringing utilities to the site. The land for the site was donated by the city of Escondido, which also donated capital funds.
The shelter serves the city of Escondido and several other municipalities.
The shelter has a housing capacity of 450-500 animals.
The annual operating budget of the shelter is $1.9 million.
The shelter operates with a staff of 43 paid staff members and 20 volunteers, some of whom work seven days per week, while others volunteer on a part time basis.
Knoxville Shelter
22,000 SF
Capacity 400 animals
Cost: $3.15 million construction cost
$143.00 per sq. foot
Project: Metro-Nashville / Davidson County Animal Control Shelter
Client: Metro-Nashville / Davidson, Nashville, Tennessee
Location: Nashville, TN
Project Size: 20,000 SF
Capacity 350 animals
Completion Date: June 2001
Cost: $3 million construction cost
Description: The Animal Care and Control Facility was the first design/build project undertaken by the Metropolitan Nashville/Davidson County government. The project was delivered on time and within budget. Bacon Group served as the shelter design consultant to the local D/B team.
$150.00 per sq. foot
Project: Montgomery County Animal Center
Client: Montgomery County Board of County Commissioners, Dayton, Ohio
Location: Dayton, OH
Project Size: Approx. 24,000 SF
Capacity 450 animals
Completion Date: Under construction
Cost: $4.9 million
Description: Design of new county animal shelter.
$204.00 per sq. foot
Project: Pinellas County Animal Services Shelter and Adoption Center
PDF file: Pinellas County Photo Album
Client: Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners, Clearwater, Florida
Location: Largo, FL
Project Size: 41,000 SF
Capacity 500 animals
Completion Date: 1995
Cost: $4,700,000
Description: The Pinellas County Animal Services Shelter and Adoption Center is the largest animal shelter designed by Bacon Group. The animal services department serves a suburban population of 925,000 people.
$114.00 per sq. foot
Project: South Lake Animal League Shelter
Client: South Lake Animal Rescue League, Inc.
Location: Lake County, FL
Project Size: 9,822 SF
Capacity 100 animals
Completion Date: In fund raising phase
Cost: $891,392 est. construction cost
Description: The design for the South Lake Animal League features a generous porch and clerestory windows in a vaulted lobby.
$90.00 per sq. foot
Project: Berkshire Humane Society Shelter
Client: Berkshire Humane Society, Inc., Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Location: Pittsfield, MA
Project Size: 20,285 SF
Capacity 350 animals
Completion Date: 2003
Cost: $4+ million est.
Description: The Berkshire Humane Society shelter includes kennels constructed with glazed block walls, seamless resinous flooring and a high pressure, hot water cleaning system. The exterior finishes include a standing seam metal roofing system, cultured stone and vinyl siding. Construction photos below show exterior, entrance and dog feature area in lobby.
$197.00 per sq. foot
Project: Conceptual Design for New Animal Shelter
Client: Sarasota County, Florida
Location: NA
Project Size: 39,263 SF
Capacity 500 animals
Completion Date: Conceptual design only
Cost: $5.5 million estimate
Description: The conceptual design for a new Sarasota County animal shelter is in the Mediterranean Revival style and includes a central courtyard. The project
was not constructed.
$140.00 per sq. foot
Project: Cuyahoga County Kennel
Animal Services Shelter, part 2
Client: Cuyahoga County Board of County Commissioners, Cleveland, Ohio,
Location: Valley View (Cleveland area), OH
Project Size: 22,000+SF
Capacity 500 animals
Completion Date: February 2002
Cost: $5.2 million
Description: New, state-of-the-art county kennel serving the greater Cleveland, Ohio area.
$236.00 per sq. foot
Project: Humane Society of Kent County Shelter
Client: Humane Society of Kent County, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
Project Size: Approx. 19,000 SF
Completion Date: 2001
Cost: Approx. $2 million
Capacity 300 animals
Description: A sizable donation by the construction company helped keep this new shelter's cost down. Photos show the wall-mounted engraved stainless steel food bowls used to note significant support for the project, kennel, cat mall and lobby view. See PDF photo album.
$105.00 per sq. foot
In 2002 Animal Sheltering Magazine, which is published by the Humane Society of the United States spent the entire year focusing on animal overpopulation.
Below are highlights from those articles:
The searches have led many to focus more public attention on the true cause of the crisis—not animal control agencies and shelters, which have long stood on the front lines to battle the problem, but on communities themselves, which continue to generate more animals than responsible homes.
As one shelter director has so succinctly put it, no one would ever think to blame the American Cancer Society for cancer, yet some members of the public and the media continue to blame animal homelessness and euthanasia on animal shelters.
If we can reach a point where all organizations, regardless of their labels, are on the same page when it comes to professional standards of animal care, responsible adoption processes, financial and moral support from their communities and local governments, and proactive prevention programs that seek to keep pets in homes, we will not have to argue anymore about how to reach our utopia. We will have arrived.
Nor should the term be used to cast aspersions on other agencies, Richard Avanzino (former Director of the San Francisco SPCA and current Director of Maddie’s Fund) advised.
“When I first came into the cause, there was a round condemnation by a lot of humane organizations about animal control programs,” he told attendees. “And now I think everybody realizes that we’re all part of the same family, all trying to do the best thing as professionally as we can. And I don’t think that we should be making good guys and bad guys out of the entire movement.
I think we should all be working together, trying to learn from each other, taking efforts and trying to see what we can do to make the best good.”
The arguments have dragged on ad nauseam, sometimes behind closed doors, sometimes in the public eye, often bitterly, and almost always to the detriment of the animals.
What the public has picked up from reductive news reports is something far too simplistic, a mental framework that creates a completely inaccurate impression: a good shelter is a “no kill” shelter; a bad one “kills” animals.
Because of the human tendency to segregate the world into categories of good versus bad and right versus wrong, movements for change—whether political, cultural, or social—are usually perceived in terms of their extremes.
And when splintered factions engage in a struggle to claim the higher ground, they forsake the chance to address common goals and further aggravate the media’s penchant for dividing people up into neatly symbolic—and supposedly opposing—sides.
We can either go to war and we can just elaborate on our differences and do nothing and badmouth each other, which unfortunately you see in a lot of jurisdictions. Or we can say, ‘Hey, let’s agree to disagree on a lot of issues. Let’s find out where we need to work together and do it.’ The key is to stop making your place look good at the expense of mine, and vice versa.”
In 2002 in northern California, the Marin Humane Society and local animal activists were fighting to save off-leash areas for canines and their two-legged companions.
In media reports, Web postings, and petitions regarding “off-leash dog rights,” they touted the importance of providing exercise to stave off aggression, curb anxiety, and enhance the relationship between pets and their people.
At the same time, the nearby San Francisco SPCA was making similar arguments in its community, leading the charge to preserve pieces of city and national parklands as doggie playgrounds.
Meanwhile, a continent and another world away, an animal group in Taylor County, West Virginia, was struggling to convince local officials of the need to connect the local “pound” to a running water line.
And in the neighboring state of Virginia, officials in another county were questioning why shelters should have heat; after all, they reasoned, it’s only natural for animals to live outdoors.
The dogs and cats in all four communities are lucky enough to have caring, humane people working to ensure better living conditions for both owned and homeless animals.
In small towns and big cities across the United States, advocates like these are responding to the specific needs of animals and people in their regions. But while some operate in places so advanced and so blessed with responsible pet owners and forward-thinking public officials that they can actually afford to lobby for off-leash areas, others live in areas so behind the times that letting animals roam is standard practice and few if any leash laws exist.
They are often beginning at vastly different starting points, but headed toward the same finish line: a day when there will be a lifelong, caring home for every companion animal.
Culturally, politically, and economically, the idyllic, progressive California communities that have the time and resources to debate the importance of dog parks might as well be on another planet—one that seems far, far away to those who live in a place where many dogs see no more of the outdoors than their backyard chains allow and cats are treated like “nuisance” animals.
In the mid-’90s, while the well-established and better funded shelters around the country were just beginning to debate the finer points of who was adoptable, who was treatable, and who was “nonrehabilitatable,” the animals in Taylor County weren’t being adopted at all.
Those left unclaimed lived out their last days in a facility with no running water and a “euthanasia” chamber fashioned out of a leaky old freezer.
And even now, as community after community sets a goal to stop euthanizing “adoptable” animals within the next five to ten years, there are vast stretches of this country where the animals are all but forgotten—places where dogs are shot instead of humanely euthanized, where shelters are not shelters but just collections of wooden crates, concrete blocks, and chicken wire.
As the national and big-city media celebrate the achievements already made for animals in areas like San Francisco and Marin County, the local press in many of America’s rural areas have been uncovering a different side of the story—like that told by the dog warden in Casey County, Kentucky, who, on $400 a month, is expected to feed the animals, pay for gas, and use whatever’s left over for his own salary.
Bridging the Wide Divide
While many dream of the day when animals around the country have good homes, some areas still lack shelters that meet even minimum standards. In parts of Virginia, for example, equipment and resources as basic as running water, heat, gloves, and euthanasia drugs are considered a luxury.
In a homogeneous country, every community could apply the same cookie-cutter formula to its homeless animal problem and chart the kind of progress that’s been made in communities where animals have finally gained status as sentient beings who are part of the family.
But animal shelters are far from immune to the economic and cultural divides that plague U.S. society; in fact, in poor areas, they are often exaggerated mirrors of those gaps, as animals tend to be the last priority on the list of government functions in most communities.
There is no better illustration of this contrast than the range of work performed by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), publisher of this magazine.
Recognizing the marked achievements that many communities have made in reducing intake numbers through spay/neuter campaigns and progressive animal care and control programs, the organization is focusing on helping shelters face a new challenge: keeping pets and their people together through behavior helplines, in-shelter training and socialization programs, and other forms of intervention designed to curb preventable relinquishments.
But as The HSUS graduated the third class of sheltering professionals from its Pets for Life National Training Center at the Dumb Friends League in Denver, Colorado, in October 2000, animal sheltering experts back at HSUS headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland, were preparing to embark on a different mission: a tour through the economically depressed areas of Virginia to find out what shelters in that state needed most.
The journey was revealing, the divide wide: Unlike their northern Virginia neighbors, one of which just retrofitted its old facility into a state-of-the-art shelter, some of the shelters in the less populated areas of the state lack even the basic necessities: litter pans, for example, or heat for the frigid winters of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“When we went down there, our idea was to hook up struggling animal control officers with mentors to help them deal with cleaning issues, euthanasia issues, anything they might have a question about,” says Kate Pullen, director of animal sheltering issues for The HSUS.
“But when we got there it was pretty clear how far some of these groups were from being able to work with a mentor or finding that useful. We expected it to be bad, but we had just no idea exactly how poor and underfunded these places were ... and how much knowledge and support they lacked.”
To Pullen, who spent years directing shelters in nearby northern Virginia and Maryland, witnessing the conditions of agencies in the forgotten pockets of the country has come as something of a shock.
The economic divides are not particular to any region, nor are they limited to rural areas. Even in California, the picture is more mottled than many imagine; the state that’s often seen as the Promised Land for animals is home to shelters that still take in litters of baby animals and fight to obtain even basic funding and support.
And Californians need only drive an hour or two out of San Francisco to find facilities struggling to bring their operations up to minimum standards.
“The rift is really a range of haves and have-nots,” says Julie Morris, vice president of the ASPCA’s National Shelter Outreach division.
“It seems to me it gets bigger and bigger ... in the sense that the haves at this point are now building some incredible facilities, upwards of 8, 9, 10 million dollars, that have all the bells and whistles, and there are still people who are operating out of sheds and Quonset huts and hooking cars up to the exhaust and euthanizing by exhaust.”
Progress in the Space Between
Somewhere between all those haves and have-nots are the hundreds of animal shelters that, while not quite prepared to declare victory in the battle against animal homelessness, have experienced gratifying progress.
Even as human populations grow, shelter staff in many regions report reduced intakes, a commitment to spay/neuter that was unheard of two decades ago, and reduced euthanasia rates. But as Anne Irwin points out, the latter is the result of years of attention to basic needs of animals in the community.
“We’ve been trying to reduce suffering, and who knew that by plugging away at it, our percentages for euthanasia [would go] down? And the real numbers are down,” says Irwin, who has been the executive director of the Bucks County SPCA in suburban Philadelphia for 30 years.
“There are days—we never thought we’d have days—where we don’t have to euthanize anything.”
“We plugged away for a long time and we said the animal overpopulation would get better if people didn’t let their pets run free and got them neutered,” she says, “but I don’t know that I really believed that we would see the results.”
Everyone has to start somewhere—even in San Francisco, where former San Francisco SPCA President Richard Avanzino started his quest to create a model shelter with no volunteers, only a few employees, and an annual budget of less than $1 million. During that era, the concept of spay/neuter was practically unheard of, says San Francisco Animal Care and Control (SF/ACC) Director Carl Friedman.
“I remember 30 years ago, if you wanted a puppy or kitten, [you would] just go to the park any Sunday during the summer months,” he says. “There would be people with boxes of kittens and puppies, trying to give them away. ... It was just a tremendous overpopulation problem. ... There was a lot more breeding going on in those days. Now I think people are more responsible.”
A World Apart: Navigating the Road Between Dreams and Reality
As One Door Closes, Another Opens
In Baltimore, the Bureau of Animal Control is trying to help animals and protect people in a city where nearly one-third of residents live at or below the poverty level and an estimated one in ten are hooked on heroin ...
© Mike McFarland/moxiecreations.com
Though San Francisco has come a long way since Friedman’s younger days, even that city hasn’t reached “zero euthanasia” in the sense that the shelter system still takes in animals who—because of aggression or for other reasons—cannot or should not be placed. But its progress is undeniable.
Of the 8,600 animals who entered its two shelters from July 2000 through June 2001, almost 80 percent were either returned to their owners or placed into new homes.
Since 1985, the shelters’ intake of cats and dogs has dropped by 58 percent; last year alone that number dropped by more than 1,000. “We are very proud of the fact that we saved the lives of 77 percent of them ...” says Ed Sayres, executive director of the SF/SPCA. “But the real achievement is that we only had 8,600 to start with.”
The city’s widely reported successes have brought the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC the sincerest form of flattery: imitation from others who want to achieve the same results.
Citizens and government leaders often read about the “San Francisco story” and assume that the methods used there will work in their own communities—and practically overnight. But the San Francisco SPCA, a 134-year-old organization with more than 1,000 volunteers and a $12 million budget, didn’t spring out of the earth fully formed.
It owes much of its success to years of sterilization and outreach efforts, a progressive community that is receptive to social change, and a strong partnership with a well-funded animal care and control agency.
That agency came into being only after the SPCA forced the hand of city officials by relaying its plan to drop its chronically underfunded animal control contract; San Francisco was fortunate to have a city government that responded appropriately by providing the financial support necessary to build a second shelter and a proactive field services agency.
Funding for animal control increased tenfold over what the SPCA had received during its tenure as the animal control services provider, says Avanzino.
... while in San Francisco, one out of three households contributes money or services to the well-staffed, well-funded, and well-appointed San Francisco SPCA.
© Photo courtesy of SF/SPCA
Some communities have not been so lucky. In recent years, private shelters in other areas of the country have tried to follow San Francisco’s example by abandoning their contracts and limiting their admissions.
And where there are no responsible agencies to pick up the slack and provide refuge to all the other homeless animals who don’t pass the “adoptability” test, animals often suffer as a result—in some cases ending up spending their days and nights wherever municipal officials can find space for them, including industrial warehouses.
“Anybody can close the door,” says Ed Sayres, who took over the helm of the SF/SPCA about three years ago. “The origin of this is the door didn’t close, the door was not closed here until the other door was open. And the group opening the door had competency and an adequate facility.
The process to get there, unfortunately, requires collaboration and meetings and shared goals. It’s not magic.”
The Cultural Gap
Further illustrating the economic divide, a recent Associated Press article detailed a real-estate survey that puts San Francisco at the top of the list of the most expensive places in the country to set up a large high-tech business.
A hot spot for the wealthy, the Bay Area is home to a generous lot, too: Around the time that Avanzino left the SPCA in the late ‘90s, one out of every three households in San Francisco was donating money or services to the organization.
On the other side of the country and at the bottom of the national real-estate ranking was Baltimore, Maryland, where one-third of the people can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone their pets, says Baltimore’s Bureau of Animal Control director, Bob Anderson.
Lack of funding for Anderson’s agency stems not so much from indifference on the part of local government as it does from cash-poor coffers; the budget left over for animal care and control is dismally low. The one private open-admission shelter in the city, the Maryland SPCA, is already maxed out, taking in 10,000 animals a year, while Baltimore’s Bureau of Animal Control takes in 14,000.
The animal control budget is just over $2 million a year—and that’s supposed to cover all expenses related to field services, shelter operations, and cruelty investigations.
“Right now I have 33 people—[HSUS] tells me I should have 42 people just for the shelter alone,” says Anderson. “[The National Animal Control Association] tells me I should have 32 officers on the street. Combined, I’ve got 33 people at this time.”
Adding to the pet homelessness burden in Baltimore is an attitude toward animals that some of Anderson’s West Coast counterparts haven’t had to contend with in decades: While San Francisco was recently named by the Fancy publications as the best place in the country to be a pet, in Baltimore animals are so low on the totem pole in some people’s minds that they think the only purpose of cats is to keep the rat population in check.
And as recently as eight years ago, "fishing" for rats and then beating or impaling them was a popular annual event at a local bar.
Almost 30 percent of Baltimore’s residents live at or below the poverty level, says Anderson. In recent years, the city has been dubbed the heroin capital of the country; it’s home to about 60,000 drug addicts, the majority of whom are hooked on heroin.
And Baltimore’s population has continued to fall dramatically every decade since the 50s, from a height of nearly 1 million to only 651,000 today. “The city is in trouble,” says Anderson. “The tax base is dwindling. The people who earn the money are moving out; we’re losing population every year.”
A World Apart: Navigating the Road Between Dreams and Reality
The Maddie's Magnet
About sixteen years ago, the Humane Society of Chilton County in Alabama was relegated to a WWII-era Quonset hut. But the undeterred executive director had bigger plans: homemade construction of a modern facility that would provide a comfortable, clean environment for animals.
© Photos courtesy of HSCC
From Baltimore to California, animal care and control professionals in agencies large and small daydream about the paradises their organizations could become given adequate resources, community support, and time.
But not every community is like progressive, enlightened San Francisco, and not every shelter can or should follow the model of the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC. Even where the partnership model is feasible, it’s not the best solution for everyone, and some groups favor a more cohesive approach.
In terms of sheer percentages, the Marin Humane Society can boast statistics as impressive as those of San Francisco; a range of training and support programs for both the two-legged and the four-legged creatures in the Novato area has helped ensure that only the severely ill and aggressive animals are euthanized. Yet Marin holds the contract for local animal control services and has no plans to relinquish it.
“We’re in an ideal place, and it took decades of pushing spay/neuter,” says Willen. “It took decades of education, of being in public schools. ... If you asked me what our ‘product’ here was, I wouldn’t say it was animals; I would say it was education. Every person, every volunteer who works here, that’s mostly what they do, and they do it constantly.”
There aren’t any shortcuts on the road to animal homelessness—an unfortunate reality that even Richard Avanzino considers in his discussion of potential solutions.
Though he sits at the helm of Maddie’s Fund, an organization that aims to create a “no kill nation” through large grants to local coalitions, Avanzino says, “There is no panacea.
‘No kill’ is not the magic answer.” And instead of trying to create “mini-San Franciscos” across the country, Maddie’s Fund would rather support programs that weave “safety nets of care” for all cats and dogs by addressing regional needs, he says.
That goal has helped breathe new life into the sheltering field, providing hope to those who have been struggling for years to gain public recognition for their cause. Who could have predicted 10 years ago that a wealthy software entrepeneur with a soft spot for animals would donate $200 million—more than the total combined budgets of most other national organizations that work with shelters—to the nation’s cats and dogs?
And the fund just keeps growing: Dave and Cheryl Duffield recently added another $37 million to their original gift, and Avanzino expects that the Maddie’s purse will grow to $1 billion by the end of this decade.
The magnitude of Maddie’s Fund has made its grants the brass ring in the minds of shelter directors eager to get the money to put towards their organizations’ life-saving programs. But the infusion of cash has also bred confusion and skepticism. Some are disappointed by the foundation’s unwillingness to give grants to government agencies, while others question its insistence on funneling money only through organizations that call themselves “no kill.”
And some believe that too many shelters are putting all their eggs in one basket by relying on the tantalizing prospect of obtaining a Maddie’s grant, when in fact, a very small percentage of groups seeking funding will actually succeed.
Last year, Maddie’s awarded $10.3 million in grants and committed another $17.7 million for ongoing projects—a considerable amount, to be sure, but not the cash cow that thousands of needy organizations across the country are hoping to tap into. Out of the dozens of local coalitions interested in obtaining Maddie’s money, about eight received grants in 2001, and another 30 potential projects are in the hopper.
The three-year-old foundation receives about 20 formal applications a year and about 20 more “pre-applications,” says Avanzino, who spends much of his time speaking with organizations in the exploratory phase of the process.
And obtaining a grant is only the beginning. Like increasing numbers of granting organizations, Maddie’s Fund is placing a premium on results; the foundation demands that project participants meet stringent requirements for the life of the grant, usually demonstrating ever-increasing adoption numbers and spay/neuter rates while also decreasing euthanasia figures.
The fund’s emphasis on spay/neuter and adoptions as the means to reduce euthanasia rates is considered simplistic by some in the field who see the picture as more complex.
National studies and local anecdotal evidence point to the effectiveness of education and intervention programs such as pet-behavior counseling and pet-friendly rental housing initiatives; in areas that are taking in more adolescent and adult animals than babies, the solution to animal homelessness lies in an array of services designed to help pet owners overcome the issues that often lead to homelessness in the first place.
For his part, Avanzino recognizes the importance of a holistic approach to the problem; his own history as a shelter director is testament to his respect for a wide range of shelter services.
At the SF/SPCA, Avanzino was one of the early campaigners for pet-friendly rental housing; he also instituted mobile adoptions, a shelter animal behavior program, free services for senior pet owners, and a doggie daycare center.
But Maddie’s Fund is trying to maintain a narrow focus on what its leaders believe to be the primary driver of reduced space-based euthanasia: sterilization and adoption, he says.
“If [an organization is] bent on education as an important way of helping our movement, we applaud that, we congratulate it, we praise to the highest that kind of effort,” he says.
“But that’s not what we fund, and it would be wrong for an education organization to decide to do some adoption, too, just to get some money. ... This should come from the heart. This should come from what you really think is the answer, and if there is alignment, [the grant] will probably work out for everybody’s best interest.”